Django Unchained did two things for me: 1. Cemented my love for Christoph Waltz2. Proved Inglorious Basterds wasn't a fluke and that Tarantino is, in demonstrable terms, continuing to improve as a movie maker.

I just bought and watched the Dredd DVD. Has anyone else got this? I was really disappointed with the quality of the conversion. The frames are chopped off at the sides, so shots I remember from the cinema are cropped down - losing quite a lot of detail and making the framing of some shots look dumb. Also, obviously a DVD isn't going to look as good as a digital 3D theatre projection, but this copy seemed washed out, over saturated, very noisy. Is this just a duff DVD conversion? Can anyone with the BR comment?

Django Unchained was loads of mad fun. So Tarantino knows what he's doing, who'da thunk it?Cloud Atlas criminally overlooked in oscar nominations, in my humble. Silver Linings Playbook hugely overrated hackjob of a story, somewhat validated only by the spellbinding Ms Lawrence's performance. Ok, Cooper's not bad either. My feelings about this movie are actually largely summed up by filmcrithulk. The third paragraph where he discusses its inconsistent sense of its own "movie-ness" hits it square.

I reckon with Cloud Atlas, Lincoln and Django, there is a distinct theme of liberation emerging in Hollywood movies in the latter part of 2012.

@Osmosis: I've got the blu-ray and I thought it looked okay. I don't have a theatrical print to compare with, but I think the noise was intentional on the filmmakers' part. I didn't notice any chopped off frames, either. It's possible they screwed up the 2D mastering by working from the wrong eye and not re-adjusting the colour (saturation and brightness should be up to compensate for the glasses. They might have tried to nip shitty 3D projectionists in the bud by doing that while shooting).

I think there are some issues with the pressing, though. When I bought it initially the disc wouldn't read at all, so I exchanged it and that one worked, but there were some weird sound synch issues that I was able to sort out myself.

If you look at the trailer ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqqgrUna28w ), at 1.32 - the DVD copy I have crops this frame so that Ma-Ma's face is only visible from the right of, say, the top of the "V" of her scar. The other time I really noticed was when Dredd and Anderson are about to raid the first stash room and a kid comes out of his front door - Anderson, on the right of frame, shakes her head at him to get back inside. This was cropped down so that the back of Thirlby's head was visible and you could see her hair move, but not the action of the head shaking. Is your version cropped like this?

I'm also amazed at the clarity and colour of the HD trailer compared to the version I watched last night!

I watched Les Mis. Disclaimer: I hate musicals. Fucking detest them. So I've never seen the stage play and if the songs were familiar, it was via osmosis rather than interest. Crowe nearly ruins the film - while everyone else does a grand job of emoting every line, he sings like he's in a shit pub rock band, and although tuneful, he is a central character, and to have an important character not pulling their weight acting-wise is sometimes death for a film.

My girlfriend, who loves musicals, says that the barricade wasn't big enough (it worked for me). To get to the good bits - Hathaway's one big number (yup, the SuBo one) is just a devastating five minutes of cinema. If you don't find the song and the five minutes that precede it emotionally harrowing, then I'm not sure what's wrong with you. Bear in mind I thought musicals were all la-di-dah, sing-what-you're-doing nonsense - shit songs in the way of a good story. But this one scene reeled me in... everything I usually detest about musicals was fantastic. Not going to lie, when Hathaway breaks down mid-song, I had a lump in my throat.

Jackman, throughout, is fantastic, although his (very natural) vibrato is going to annoy some people. The chap playing Marius had one of those weird tenor foghorn voices, but nailed his big solo number as convincingly as Hathaway and Jackman did theirs. So yeah, all in all, I was kind of blown away by Les Mis. I expected to hate it like I hate all other musicals (Tommy made me physically ill, Rocky Horror makes me want to punch things violently). But the language of the songs, the pitch-dark subject matter, the intimate, emotional performances, inventive set design and sense of scale really worked for me. Not even Crowe's am-dram performance could spoil it. 8/10

In other movie-related nonsense, I attempted to re-watch The Dark Knight Rises yesterday and gave up half-way through. That film is an insult to the two that went before it. Not even Bane's comedy accent and a heavy dose of weed could keep me engaged. In particular, Alfred's dialogue reeks, full of crap exposition and cheesy rhetoric. The plot is mince. The last 30 mins or so are good, but I couldn't face the Pit scenes. I'd already sat through an hour and ten minutes of waffle, and knowing that was coming was like water torture. One of those rare occasions when home viewing was worse than the cinema. 3/10.

Crowe really tries his best but he's out classed at every turn, given the rest of the cast did they need a star in that role too? He's not unwatchable, just difficult about 50% of the time.

I'd agree with Bram's Girlfriend on the size of the barricade not being big enough but to me that's part of a bigger problem: the film mixes aesthetics somewhat unconvincingly.

We go from locations to realistic sets to "stage-y" sets to obvious green screen work. The colour pallet changes in the same way; aping revolutionary paintings then going for something more naturalistic. Using historic costumes then stage costumes. Realistic elements change to something almost expressionistic.

Some of these choices are excellent - I loved the right in the face with a wide angled lens close ups for the solo's. Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream" is done like this and you just get EVERYTHING and it's fabulous. The actors look right down the lens in these moments and while it's jarring in places it just feels SO SO right.

But the aesthetic differences make the movie feel long as there isn't a solid rhythm to the thing. Within the close ups or mid shots the vocals arrangements have been changed, I assume, to how they must play on stage. They're quieter here - more intimate - which is fine and a clever use of le cinema but it brings the energy of theses songs down and makes the pace of the film drag.

The movie is worth a watch because they really went for it and has more impressive, interesting and emotional moments than your average film - just have a coffee first and maybe not the big coke 'cause you will have to pee.

Just watched Where The Wild Things Are. I know I'm not the target audience. I've got to say I love the aesthetic. In fact this is the most beautiful film I've seen in a while. Unfortunately the story didn't work. I could see what Jonze was trying to do, but the wild things should have been otherworldly and strange, whereas they came across as Suburban and everyday.

What's the target audience for Wild Things, Steve? Because to me, it's very much a film for grown-ups who grew up reading the book rather than children. I think what you're saying is exactly what Jonze was trying to do. He was basically saying that as strange and base and crazy these creatures are, they're also prone to human foibles. It was never going to work quite like the book. It was always going to have to evolve into something it wasn't originally. I really liked his take on it.

I don't know who the target audience for "Where the Wild Things Are" is, but that movie gut punched me when I first saw it and bought up things I hadn't thought about since I was eight. The relation between Max and his sister I could totally relate to when I was that age and the scene where he destroyed the thing he built for her out of Popsicle sticks (and Immediatly regretted) really rang true how a boy of that age doesn't even know why they do some of the destructive things that they do. They just do. I like how they tie that part of Max into the Carol character and how each one of the wild things are a different part of Max's id. Now that I think of it, I need to watch this film again since its been awhile.